Status Updates From Northbridge Rectory

I started reading this because Cheerfulness Breaks In ended on a cliffhanger. More than 40% through Northbridge Rectory before clarifying sentence relieved the tension

“Mrs Villars surveyed her world with great satisfaction. As she began to clear up some of the mess she reflected that the rest of John’s leave, or so much as he saw fit to bestow on his parents, would consist largely of clearing up after him, and she further reflected that, thank goodness, here was someone who would never notice if she was tired.”

“ These are but examples of Christmas discomforts in Northbridge, and indeed all over England, but the reader may take it for granted that everyone who came to the party was equally uncomfortable and that most of them were being extremely good and cheerful about it.”

“What with Christmas and one thing and another, Northbridge was beginning to bubble like a boiling pot. Nearly every house, though most of them were already packed to bursting point, had extra refugees or evacuees, or was housing relations that no one wanted but didn’t like not to ask. Most of the unwelcome visitors had forgotten or mislaid their ration-books, and made but little effort to get them…”

“Christmas, bad enough at the best of times, now began to cast an even thicker gloom than usual over the English scene…As the Rector when off his guard so truly said, the war was little but an intensification of Christmas in that it either separated families that wanted to be together, or far worse, herded together families for whom normally twelve counties were not large enough.”

“… she could think of nothing to say to Miss Pemberton that would take more than a quarter of an hour. Provençal poetry was not her line, Elizabeth Rivers she vaguely confused with Jane Shore, and as for early Italian painters she could hope no more than to look intelligent and not overdo it.”

“Under his benefactress’s severe eye he worked harder than he had ever worked before and even looked a little less thin, while his books on Provençal literature continued to excite the interest and in some cases the vitriolic criticism of at least two hundred readers. He sometimes resented her yoke and was always grateful for her kindness, showing his gratitude by accepting her rule in every respect...”

“ It then burst upon her mind that she had done something which was against all the tacit conventions of Northbridge. Coming there as she did, fresh from the life of a headmaster’s wife, where open house was kept term in term out, it had been some time before she realized that a Northbridge tea party still had a slightly Victorian sanctity about it.”

“…there is no way of communicating with them. It seemed to be horridly true. She knew that in a thousand years there would be no way in which she could find a common language with the blonde refugee or the people in sham fur coats... Always she would seem stuck-up and affected to them, conceited, lah-di-dah, a Madam. Always, to be perfectly frank with herself, she would fear and shrink from contacts with them.”

“ Mrs Spender, who had a maddening desire to save people trouble, charged in unannounced, followed by Major Spender, who was experiencing the peculiar sinking of the spirits that always overcame him when his wife, whom he loved and admired greatly, turned up.”

“ From previous experience Mrs Villars knew that the next thing would be a visit from Hibberd, who presently emerged from the kitchen garden and with the unhurried tread of the professional gardener came up the grass walk and stood in silent disapproval of employers and particularly employers’ wives. ‘Good afternoon, Hibberd,’ said Mrs Villars, and as she was by nature a nettle grasper she added, ‘Anything wrong?’”

“…the Sexton, who before the war had kept the rectory garden in quite good order, had taken full advantage of the joyous state of chaos produced by a national calamity to withdraw himself gradually from his job, though not from his wages. This was not altogether a misfortune, for he was adamant about bedding out and Mrs Villars was now able to call her flower-beds her own…”